Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Plum and Prune





From reader "Laura M.":



"Hi there, Congratulations for your blog. I just happened to come across it by means of www.elastico.net, which provides interesting links to readers from all over on a daily basis. I was wondering if you could tell me what this tattoo means. It's my sister's, but it was me who paid for it because our parents wouldn't. I've always wondered what it means, and I'm dying to tell her. Whatever the meaning is, we're ready. Thanks a lot."



It is a common Chinese surname. According to Wikipedia, about 7.9 percent of the Chinese population is surnamed . As of 2002, there were approximately 103 million people in China and 108 million worldwide with this surname. To date, this remains the world's most common surname.



It also means "plum" or "prune". I am curious about why Laura's sister got this tattoo without fully understand what it meant.



= plum; judge; surname



6 comments:

  1. Perhaps Laura's sister's name is Lee or Leigh. I would not be surprised if a family had daughters named Laura and Lee.

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  2. Hi, it's Laura.
    Actually, my sister's name is Begoña (Spanish name for Begonia, like the flower). She actually got the tattoo just because she liked the shape of it. But somehow she had already seen somewhere that it was "Lee"- but still she didn't know what the meaning of "Lee" was. Risky, somehow, eh?
    Tian: thanks for your time again.

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  3. Isn't Mohammad (in all its variant spellings) the world's most common surname?

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  4. I've heard that Mohammed is the world's most popular given name, and Chang (= Zhang) is the most popular surname.

    Oddly enough, I have yet to encounter anyone named Mohammed Chang...

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  5. I do wonder what body part that is.

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  6. eh that should be on my body, being my surname and all. :p

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